


these long cold days

by dirgewithoutmusic



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 02:49:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6312415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirgewithoutmusic/pseuds/dirgewithoutmusic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the war, Dean holed up in hollows and friendly attics and Muggle pubs. He drew Umbridge the Toad, noseless Voldy confused by the last dozen plus years of wizardly pop culture, the Ministry of Magic with its fingers stuffed in its stuffy ears. </p><p>He drew Snape as Headmaster, his sneer easy after seven years of notebook margin practice. Dean drew the Dark Mark over London’s skyline and he left his work nailed up around Diagon Alley, Hogsmeade, Godric’s Hollow. He signed his name. He had things he wanted to say. </p><p>There were long days when he didn’t talk to anyone– walking old fields and long roads, sleeping in haystacks. There were long weeks when he only talked to strangers– passersby, shop owners, sympathizers, snatchers who he traded curses with. </p><p>He drew the Gryffindor Common Room, hearths all ablaze. He listened to Lee Jordan’s radio show on the crackling airwaves. He drew his little sisters, who had gone to France with his mother and father. He drew faces from the darkened boys’ dormitory– Harry’s long bangs hiding his scar, Neville practicing his dance moves for the Yule Ball, Ron asleep with his head on his thick Weasley sweater, Seamus grinning at him over a three a.m. game of cards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	these long cold days

**Author's Note:**

> anonymous asked me on tumblr to write something about Dean and Seamus

All through the war, Dean drew.

It was something he had done since he was small– smiley-face suns and stick figures– but he had kept going. He had learned cross-hatching and shadowing; depth, perspective, and color; patience. 

Until age ten, until the letter, Dean had drawn himself a suit of shining armor, a dragon to slay. He had drawn aliens and ray guns and wings. They were adventures that he wanted but that he could not have. 

When he first arrived at Hogwarts, he drew Nearly Headless Nick’s stiff collar in his notebook margins. He tried to capture the flick of sparks off Flitwick’s wand, Seamus’s singed eyebrows at supper, the owls swooping overhead. 

He had never been away from home before for more than an overnight. He drew the gentle curl of his mother’s hair, gilded in sunlight. He had learned how to draw the shine and to pick out colors and bright glare on matte paper by drawing imagined plate armor. But he drew the light on his father’s (stepfather’s) (father’s) crooked glasses, his sister’s sparkly nail polish when they held hands crossing the roads. There were things he missed that he could not have. 

Dean hid the sketches under his bed and showed Seamus his little comics about Snape’s greasy hair instead. 

In the war, Dean holed up in hollows and friendly attics and Muggle pubs. He drew Umbridge the Toad, noseless Voldy confused by the last dozen plus years of wizardly pop culture, the Ministry of Magic with its fingers stuffed in its stuffy ears. 

He drew Snape as Headmaster, his sneer easy after seven years of notebook margin practice. Dean drew the Dark Mark over London’s skyline and he left his work nailed up around Diagon Alley, Hogsmeade, Godric’s Hollow. He signed his name. He had things he wanted to say. 

There were long days when he didn’t talk to anyone– walking old fields and long roads, sleeping in haystacks. There were long weeks when he only talked to strangers– passersby, shop owners, sympathizers, snatchers who he traded curses with. 

He drew the Gryffindor Common Room, hearths all ablaze. He listened to Lee Jordan’s radio show on the crackling airwaves. He drew his little sisters, who had gone to France with his mother and father. He drew faces from the darkened boys’ dormitory– Harry’s long bangs hiding his scar, Neville practicing his dance moves for the Yule Ball, Ron asleep with his head on his thick Weasley sweater, Seamus grinning at him over a three a.m. game of cards. 

Seamus had taught him Exploding Snap. Dean had taught him poker, gin rummy, go fish. Dean sketched in Seamus’s eyebrows as curling bits of smoke, laughed, and pulled his blanket tighter around his shoulders in the sympathizers’ basement where he was spending the night. There were things he wanted that he could not have. 

When the snatchers caught him near Hogsmeade, they took his knapsack. They took his sneakers, his wand, his spare cloak. They burned his notebooks in the hearth of Malfoy Manor before they led him down cold stairs and left him in the dark.

It was a long few months where he saw no sunlight except for a few precious moments where the sun hit the high, angled windows just right. 

Ollivander and Griphook were already there in the dark. Luna came later. Blonde hair in a tattered cloud, one earring missing, she thanked the Death Eater for holding the prison door open at her and drifted inside. Dean, for all they would remain friends for the rest of their lives, was never quite sure how much of Luna was just Luna screwing with people. 

It was a long few months– Dean got them to give him some paper and pens eventually. Luna made papier-mâché earrings. Ollivander napped six hours a day and they all piled him high with their extra coats and blankets and socks. Dean sat for quiet hours with Griphook, drawing his wife as Griphook grumbled “what an ugly face– so  _full_  and  _smooth_. My wife’s a  _beauty_ , you better draw her as such.” Dean sketched in a jagged cheekbone, a crooked chin and Griphook almost smiled. 

When Dobby got them out, Dean had pages and pages stuffed in his pockets, clenched in his hands. He carried them out with him, into sea air.

Ollivander made them replacement wands with old hands and tools transfigured from driftwood and beach glass. Dean walked out to the water while he worked and watched the waves mumble along the stones. 

His sisters were somewhere on safer shores, his mother’s hair all gilded with sun, his father’s spectacles shining. Dean had told them he couldn’t go with them, he couldn’t run. 

“They called you  _Gryffindor_ ,” his sister Ella had said. “Not  _stupid_.” Little Jenny had been crying and so had his father. His mother had packed him a bag full of clean socks. The snatchers had tossed it in a ditch somewhere outside Hogsmeade. 

Dean and Luna left Ollivander and Griphook at Shell Cottage and then they went to Hogwarts. 

In the years that followed, Dean would draw the war. There were things he didn’t want to forget. There were things he wanted to dredge up from the sludge and splatter down on paper, hoping maybe keep them from circling his head at night, wanting attention. 

He drew the protective dome that rose up over Hogwarts, the candles in the Great Hall, Cho Chang’s face lit up from an Expelliarmus– tried to capture light, tie it down to the page. Dean had killed three people in the war– snatchers, Death Eaters on Hogwarts grounds– and he drew their faces over and over when he couldn’t sleep. He drew Neville’s face (tired, kind), Ginny’s glare, Luna’s gentle, distracted smile. 

Dean didn’t draw the first glimpse he’d had of Seamus after the capture, the escape, the night he and Luna set foot on Hogwarts ground. It wasn’t something he could draw. Dean didn’t remember the light on his hair, his cloak sweeping over stone, new muscles, new scars, new inches of height– 

Dean remembered standing in the Room of Requirement with old classmates and new students moving around him, both his fists curled tight into the back of Seamus’s robes, both of Seamus’s tight on his arms. He remembered the heartbeat thudding up the column of Seamus’s throat, where Dean’s forehead was pressed close. He remembered not wanting to let go. He remembered letting go. 

Dean remembered coming back into the Great Hall after the battle and looking at the dead– at Fred Weasley, whose crackling voice he had heard on so many late cold nights; Nymphadora Tonks, who he just barely remembered from first year; Remus Lupin, who had made him feel smart in class; Lavender Brown, who Dean had danced with at the Yule Ball– but not Seamus. He didn’t see Seamus there. He was sick and guilty with gladness. 

Dean didn’t draw the dead, after. Denis Creevey made a book of his brother Colin’s photos. Dean sat down with a blank page, a good pen, and tried to draw Fred’s grin. There were things here he didn’t want to forget. He scribbled through half-done smirks and tangles of unruly hair he just couldn’t get right. He tossed the botched pages in the fire and, after a long moment staring at his fireplace and seeing the hearth of Malfoy Manor, Dean put his pen away.

After the war, Dean went on camping trips with Luna, watched her look for creatures that might or might not exist. They skewered meatballs and chopped vegetables and roasted them over fires. 

After the war, Dean went over to have tea and jam at Griphook’s. He recognized his wife when Griselda Griphook opened the door and grinned up at him. His tattered old sketch was framed and hung in the front hallway. There are some things that survive the dark, that escape into the sea air, that come home. 

When Dean went with the Gryffindor gang to go cheer for Ginny Weasley’s Quidditch games, Lee Jordan commentated in the stands, sending George over into fits of laughter, red hair shaking into his eyes. There were days when no one expected an echo of that laugh, when no one flinched at the absence– less and less rare as the years went on. Ginny flew, twisting into tricks that she’d taught herself on her brothers’ stolen brooms. They cheered.

Ollivander’s hands were old. All of him was old. Dean showed up for an unplanned visit one day and found him in the back, gathered up the phoenix feathers his shaking hands had knocked to the floor. Dean helped him gather them up, sat him down, then brushed the plumes out gently and laid them out on the work table. By the time he was done, Dean had a job. 

Seamus was trying to learn how to cook and it was going about as well as spellwork ever had for him. “Dean could just draw your eyebrows on,” Ella told him sweetly when he and Seamus visited Dean’s family for dinner. 

When Dean came home from Ollivander’s, the whole flat smelled like smoke. The windows were thrown open to let the sunlight and cold air in, so Dean didn’t unwind his scarf. 

Seamus sat on the floor by the coffee table, eating Chinese food out of a take-out container with a fork. He looked up, his fingers greasy, his winter coat bundled tight, his shaggy hair gilded with sun. 

“Hey,” said Dean. “Stay there,” said Dean and went to find a notebook, digging in his pocket for a pen. 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted here http://ink-splotch.tumblr.com/post/141416510524/can-you-write-something-about-deanseamus


End file.
